Allied For Startups at the “Breaking Bottlenecks in the Digital Single Market” Workshop by CEPS Ideas Lab

Last week, our Head of Policy Vasco Pereira da Silva participated in the workshop “Breaking Bottlenecks in the Digital Single Market” at the CEPS (Centre for European Policy Studies) Ideas Lab.

The discussion was based on recent work by the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra and Bird & Bird identifying the key structural bottlenecks that continue to hinder the functioning of the EU Digital Single Market. The analysis confirms that the main barriers are already well identified. The real challenge is implementation.

From the perspective of startups and scaleups, the issue is not simply the volume of regulation but how rules interact and are implemented across Member States. Vasco highlighted that fragmented enforcement, overlapping obligations and slow or inconsistent guidance create regulatory density without regulatory coherence, making cross-border scaling harder.

A well-functioning Single Market remains Europe’s most powerful tool for competitiveness and innovation. But for it to deliver scale, regulation must enable cross-border growth.

Many thanks to J. Scott Marcus and Raquel Jorge Ricart for the kind invitation, and to Sitra and Bird & Bird for the excellent work behind the report. Looking forward to continuing this important discussion.